The Spider Hunts
by Tali Rancourt
Summary: Set a bit over seven hundred years before 'The Call'. A hunter, a traitor, and an innocent priest... More Spelljammer, really, but it's part of Tali's history.


Amid the darkness of space, the ship stood out to the huntress like a beacon of sunlight. Sunlight… she cursed the sunlight, and the treacherous bitch that had dragged her out into that sunlight. For more than fifty years, she had chased her prey, far from the comfort of the city and the darkness of her people's realm. She had been charged with a quest, and she dared not return home until it had been completed.  
  
Now, at long last, she had sighted the ship. Now, in the depths of wildpsace, there would be no escape. Now, she could finally accomplish her mission and perhaps, if she was lucky, go home. "Praise Lolth," the huntress whispered, and began her preparations.  
  
The ship was a tall-masted clipper, though its sails were taken in and secured for space travel. The open deck was quiet and mostly empty, but for the two unfortunates assigned to watch duty on the ship's night shift. There had not been any cause for alarm in several voyages now, and the watchmen were relaxed, chatting quietly with one another.   
  
Neither of them heard the soft footfalls of the invisible presence as the huntress landed on the deck. Wrinkling her nose in disgust, she watched them both for a moment. 'Oblivious humans,' she thought. 'How pathetic you are.' She tilted her head back and scented the air, then turned and crept stealthily aft. She reached the enclosed area at the stern of the ship, eased the door open just a few inches, and slipped inside, then closed the door silently.  
  
A few more feet, a cautious, silent move through another door and into a small lantern-lit room, and she knew that this was the right place. The smell of her prey was everywhere. The echoes of the traitor's presence radiated from the very walls, from the single bed fastened to one wall and to the floor, and it began to make her slightly nauseous. Or was that something different? She sniffed, then made a face as the stink of human assaulted her senses. Sharing her bed with a human… this one was no better than an animal, just as the Spider Queen had cautioned her.  
  
She ruffled through the contents of the room as she waited. There were books, many books, all in languages she could not understand. A red-trimmed grey robe was hung carefully in one corner, and a series of mediocre watercolor paintings of landscapes adorned the walls. In a chest at the foot of the bed, she found a silver longsword and a pair of steel scimitars that she recognized as those her target would wield, as well as a heavier, wickedly hooked steel blade and a small shield.  
  
She frowned faintly at this. Her first priority was the death of the traitor, this was true, but to accomplish it against an unarmed opponent? That would be unsatisfying after such a long chase, but she supposed it would have to do. 'All glory comes through the will of Lolth,' she reminded herself quietly, then extinguished the lantern that lit the room and crouched beside one end of the bed to wait, still invisible, in the darkness.  
  
At the other end of the ship, Akharen stretched and rubbed his shoulders, then rubbed his eyes. "I am getting too old for this," he said ruefully. With every voyage, it seemed, he felt a greater ache in his bones at the end of a shift spent steering the ship. He leaned on the helm for a moment, looking thoughtfully out into the stars, then turned to the map table. Fondly, he smiled down at the petite black-skinned elf poring over a navigational chart and murmured, "Tali, it's late. You should have been off hours ago."  
  
"You're not old, ussta'chev," she remarked offhandedly, then didn't respond for a moment, biting her lip as she moved a straightedge the slightest bit, made a short pencil mark, then looked up and smiled. "…and I know it's late. I wanted to finish plotting the course through tonight, since Calastor's been under the weather and needs the extra sleep." She waved a hand toward the door and smiled. "Go on to bed. I'll only be a few minutes."  
  
Akharen chuckled softly and shook his head with a rattle of beaded braids. He turned to go, then turned back, leaned down, and curled a hand into the snow-white ponytail she'd bound her hair into. He pulled her head back gently, smiled down into her eyes, and kissed her. "Come to bed soon," he said softly, then released her hair and turned to go.  
  
"I will," Tali murmured as she looked down at the chart again, smiling and flushing warm with a familiar thrill. "I love you…" she said softly. She felt him squeeze her shoulder, and then he was gone, leaving her to her work. Methodically, she began plotting the last few pieces of the night's course.  
  
As he strode purposefully across the open deck, Akharen waved up to the two crewmen on watch duty. He continued without waiting to see if they waved back, and stepped through the door leading aft, then through the second door into his quarters. Rubbing his eyes again, he blinked as he noticed that the lantern had gone out, and fumbled on the table for his knife and flint to re-light it.  
  
When he sparked the lantern back to life, after a few tries, he sat down on the edge of the bed and leaned down to pull off his boots. He hated the damnable things, and infinitely preferred sandals, but sandals had a way of getting caught in the ropes and riggings of the ship when he was working on deck. He was still struggling with the second boot when he became aware of someone standing over him, and looked up.  
  
He was not at first alarmed when a pair of gleaming red eyes met his, until he realized that these red eyes did not belong to his wife. There was no life, no emotion, and no fire in these eyes. They stared out at him from an ebony face framed by a tumble of snowy hair very much like his wife's, but clearly different.   
  
He recalled Tali's stories about her people and her family, and he very strongly suspected he was in trouble. "Greetings, Madam Drow," he said in a voice kept carefully neutral. "How may this humble hand of Ptah be of service to you?"  
  
The huntress stared down at him, and her mouth curled into a cold, imperious frown. "Not only a human," she spat as if she didn't even hear his question, "…but a prophet of a false god. My sister's taste in bedmates leaves much to be desired." For a moment she scrutinized him, taking in the strange bronze skin, the dark braided and beaded hair, and his unusual mode of dress, then quietly withdrew her sword and leveled it at him.  
  
"You…" she said quietly and in a voice thick with disgust, "…are of no use to me, inconsequential male scum." She smiled coldly and cruelly as she began to press the point of the sword against his throat, then watched the tiny droplet of blood trickling over his skin. "Lolth tlu malla, jal ultrinnan zhah xundus," she pronounced, then laughed hollowly. "Pray, priest. Pray to your false god. Pray that he keeps a place for you."  
  
It was that moment that Akharen chose to knock the sword away, badly gashing his arm and opening a long scratch across his neck. He dove around the much-smaller Drow, toward the door and bellowed, "Intruder! Sound the alarms! There is an intruder on the ship!" He prayed that someone had heard him, then whispered a quiet thanks to Ptah when he heard footsteps running up the stairs from the crew quarters below.  
  
She was upon him before he could open the door. With astonishing strength for such a small woman, she caught his wrist, spun him around to face her, then kicked him into the wall. Snarling furiously, she stared into his eyes, then whispered something he couldn't quite make out and placed her hand flat on his chest. He found his body suddenly refusing to respond.  
  
All he could do was stare helplessly as she once more leveled the sword at his throat, then began to press forward, inch by slow, excruciating inch. He tried to scream, but found that his voice would no longer come. By the time she had driven the sword through his neck and into the wall behind, he could feel the liquid collecting in his lungs, and realized that it was his blood.  
  
At first he was oddly detached as he realized he was dying, then she began to speak. "Pray that your false god keeps a place for you," she said again, "…because Lolth has a great many torments in store for your kind if he does not." She took a step closer then, staring into his eyes all the while, she slowly inclined her head to one side and regarded him with an unsettlingly cheerful smile.   
  
"You will die, false priest," she said. "You will die, and your death will cause great grief to my sister in her last moments. Doubt me not, human – I am going to kill her, and your god cannot save her from the eternity of infinite pain that the Spider Queen has planned." She gave the sword another shove, driving it deeper into the wall behind him, to emphasize her point as she finished.  
  
He could neither speak nor breathe now, and the room was starting to become grey and misty around him. The last thing he felt was the slow trickle of tears down his cheeks, and the last thing he saw was the pair of cold, red eyes staring into his and looking viciously amused. With his last thought, he prayed to Ptah, or any god that would listen, that his wife would escape her murderous kinswoman even if he had not… and then all was blackness.  
  
The huntress stalked calmly out of the room, leaving the dead man pinned to the wall with her sword. She had another, and she knew that his cries had certainly alerted the crew. It was equally certain that her sister would be among them – and indeed, as soon as she passed through the door leading out to the open deck, Tali ran headlong into her, with several crewmen following behind.  
  
Tali stared at the other Drow for a moment before recognition set in. Then she stared for a moment longer in a violent silence, and shook her head. "Laele… you bitch. Why don't you people ever give up?" She quietly noted the cold amusement in her sister's eyes, then cast a glance past her, expecting to see her husband following behind. When seconds passed and he did not come, Tali's face paled.   
  
She glanced at Laele again, and turned even paler when her sister started laughing without speaking a word. "No…" was all she could manage, in a tiny, choked whisper as she elbowed her way past the other Drow and through the two now-open doors. "…no… Akharen… no… please…"  
  
Her sister's laughter still echoed in Tali's head. Whether it was real or imagined she was no longer sure, as she pushed her way into the quarters she shared with her husband. There she found him, the black adamantite sword still pinning him to the wall, his eyes already dulled and his blood cooling on the floor beneath him.   
  
Her strength failed her for a moment, and she dropped to her knees, mindless of the blood she landed in. At the same time, tears welled up in her eyes, and the fiery, gleaming red that Akharen had so admired began to darken, deepening toward an almost Abyssal black as she stared up at him. Finally, she let her eyes close, then threw her head back and screamed a loud, wordless, keening cry of grief mingled with rage.  
  
She was only dimly aware of her surroundings as she opened her eyes, rose to her feet again, then reached a single hand up and gently closed his eyes. She rose onto tiptoe and touched her lips to his in a quick but tender kiss, then turned to the chest at the foot of the bed and opened it. It was his khopesh, the hooked sword almost too heavy for her to lift, that she chose.   
  
Straining to hold the too-large blade upright, eyes black and blank, she turned and walked back out to the open deck. She walked slowly, and with each step, she changed. Her delicate fingernails became vicious, hooked claws. Her teeth lengthened into equally vicious snake-like fangs. Her snowy hair took on a faint copper cast and began to stir in a wind that did not blow.  
  
On the deck, Tali found Laele waiting, surrounded by a loose semi-circle of the crewmen who appeard to be too afraid to attack. One of them called a question to Tali, but she did not respond. She raised the heavy blade and brought it down, without finesse, with only the sheer fury she felt in the depths of her grief.   
  
It was an attack easily parried, but she did not appear to notice, or care. Laele, surprised by the strength of the sudden attack and her sister's strange appearance, was hard pressed to keep up her defense, and could not present an offense at all. It was all she could do to twist her blade to turn away the strange, heavy sword. She was left without breath or time even to taunt her sister as she fought for her life.  
  
Again and again, Tali raised the khopesh and brought it down. Every time, Laele's lighter adamantite blade turned it away, sometimes striking her in the process. Finally, coated in blood from countless scratches and gashes, and that of her husband in which she had knelt, she brought the sword down, and sent the adamantite blade to the floor in shattered pieces.  
  
Even this barely seemed to register as she raised the blade and brought it down again. This time, it buried deep in Laele's shoulder, but it did not easily come free. Still blank-eyed, Tali let go of the sword's grip and leapt at her sister, snarling, claws and fangs bared. With every rip of claws, every tear of fangs, every warm splash of Drow blood, the crew stared on in abject, open-mouthed horror.  
  
In a few minutes, it was over, and Tali sat, panting and covered now in the blood of three, amid a scattering of barely-recognizable scraps of armor, cloth, and flesh. She reached for the khopesh, now laying free on the deck, and dragged herself to her feet as she grasped it. Trembling visibly, she finally cast a glance around at the carnage, and whimpered.  
  
Still breathing raggedly, she turned to face the crewmen, and then her eyes brightened to red again, once more welling up with tears as she fell back against the wall and sobbed brokenly. She was still sobbing when six horrified sailors carried her, limp and unresisting, below decks and threw her in the brig.  
  
She spent the remaining few days of the voyage in the brig, staring at the wall, unseeing, not eating, not even washing away the blood when water was provided to her. She remained unmoving and utterly silent except when the ship's captain finally came to see her as they were coming in to port. It was several minutes before she registered his presence, and even then, she did not look his way until he addressed her.  
  
"I'm sorry, Tali," he said softly. "I know Akharen was your husband. Who was she?"  
  
Her voice was as dull and lifeless as her appearance, and barely above a whisper. "My sister."  
  
He nodded, thoughtfully, then fidgeted nervously before he spoke again. "I've come to ask you to leave the ship. You'll be paid, your own pay as well as your husband's, but I can't have you on this ship anymore. The crew is afraid of you."   
  
He paused a beat, then continued, "We preserved Akharen's body for you. Maybe you can have him brought back somewhere planetside."  
  
"Maybe," she said dully. "Thank you."  
  
The captain started to speak again, then just shook his head and turned to walk away. As he went, he said quietly, "I'll have someone bring you water. Clean yourself up, and come above decks to collect your things, and his. We'll be in port in a few hours."  
  
When the water came, she mutely washed herself and discarded her bloodied clothing. She went above decks to her quarters, stark naked, not so much unashamed as uncaring, and quietly dressed herself, then slung the silver longsword across her back. As she was preparing to belt on her scimitars, she noted that someone had cleaned the khopesh and laid it on the bed. She stared at the weapons for a while, then moved the longsword to her belt and strapped the khopesh carefully across her back.  
  
By the time the ship reached port, she had collected the few belongings, mostly his, that she cared to save and placed them carefully in a pack. When the captain presented her with their pay, she placed this, too, in the pack, then fastened it shut and shouldered it. Despite the weight, she lifted Akharen's carefully sheet-wrapped body, and managed to walk straight, if stiffly, down the gangplank and onto the docks. She walked toward town, neither acknowledging the dockworkers nor looking back at the ship as she lost herself in the crowds of Palanthas. 


End file.
